Turning The ‘War On Terrorism’ Into Vietnam

The anti-war crowd in America and Europe are unwittingly doing everything in their power to ensure that America repeats all the mistakes of Vietnam while fighting the ‘War on Terrorism.’

Certainly Bin Laden’s spirits (if he still lives) must be buoyed by most of Europe’s craven attempts to distance themselves from the fighting and by the Bush 41 team’s transparent attempts to protect the myth that the Gulf War was a complete success. Just as the North Vietnamese’s esprit de corps was lifted by anti-war protests in America, terrorists across the world must be thrilled with the anti-war editorials they’re reading in the Western press. Even former Presidents Jimmy Carter & Bill Clinton have blatantly attempted to undermine President Bush’s foreign policy by coming out against an Iraqi invasion.

But without removing Hussein the ‘War on Terrorism’ is for all intents and purposes lost just as Vietnam was truly lost when we chose not to go all out against the North Vietnamese. No matter how much intelligence, cooperation from foreign law enforcement, etc, that we get, it is all meaningless if we can’t stop the state support of terrorism. Regimes that support terrorism give terrorists access to funding, intelligence, training, and protection that insures the long-term survival and success of terrorist organizations of global reach. Stopping nations like Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, & Syria (among others) from continuing to support terrorists by any means necessary has to be our number one goal, because until that is complete, victory in the ‘War on Terrorism” will not be possible.

The terrorists, like the North Vietnamese, cannot defeat us militarily. So their goal is simply to endure and wait for our morale to fail. In fact, they’re already making progress on that front. Even though we’re less than a year out from 9/11, many Westerners don’t even have the stomach to pursue the terrorists responsible for last September’s atrocities if it means a conflict with the governments of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Lebanon. If it comes down to a choice between letting al-Queda launch more attacks at America or boldly confronting these rogue nations that are supporting al-Queda, the anti-war contingent is perfectly content to allow more Americans to die.

What these politicians who are against the invasion of Iraq really want is a politically palatable “war for show.” Ideally, they’d like to see us make a few splashy arrests in friendly nations, improve homeland security, and make grand pronouncements about how we’re rolling back terrorism around the globe. Meanwhile, the terrorist groups would be reorganizing in terrorist friendly nations across the Middle-East while we stood by unwilling to move against the regimes that support them. Then when the inevitable repeats of 9/11 occur these same politicians will spin the blame away to someone else while never admitting that following their recommendations led to a stratospheric number of American deaths.

But this time, when the cost in lives and treasure becomes more than we can bear, unlike Vietnam, we won’t be able to simply pull out and go home. As 9/11 showed, al-Queda and other terrorist groups are going to bring the fight to us whether we take it to them or not. We face a threat every bit as dangerous as the one we faced in WW2 and if we repeat the same mistakes we made in Vietnam, the consequences will be cataclysmic.